Trick
by SometimeSelkie
Summary: An attack on the Burrow was inevitable, and the first wave is arriving. Oneshot, summer after HBP. Ginny's room.


Standard disclaimers apply.

**Trick**

She buried her face in Harry's neck and gave a happy sigh. He pulled back after a moment to look into her eyes, smiling as he slid his hands down her arms. When he finally reached her hands, he grasped them and they clinked.

Wait. Her hands _clinked_? They both looked down in confusion. "What's this?" Harry asked. She saw the familiar potion gleaming like the inside of a clamshell in its rounded glass phial, a small pit of dread forming in her stomach. "…Amortentia?" _Not again._ "You DRUGGED ME?" he roared. "With LOVE POTION?"

Tears burned in her eyes. "Oh Harry, you already knew. Remember?"

"How could you trick me like this?"

"It wasn't my idea!" she cried. "Hermione thought it'd help!"

"But you went along!" His face was starting to swim in her vision. She reached for him but couldn't grasp his shoulder before he turned away-

The top of her scalp suddenly exploded in pain, and she gasped with the force of it. "Wake up, Weaslette." A heavy weight settled onto Ginny's chest and arm, and when her eyes snapped open, she was looking up at the sneer of Draco Malfoy. An involuntary shriek of alarm erupted from her throat, but never passed her lips. "If you speak above a whisper, you die," Malfoy snarled, jabbing his wand into the delicate skin under her chin. "If you move, you die. Do you understand?" She paused a second, glancing towards her nightstand, and nodded, tears of impotent frustration stinging her eyes. "If you're looking for your wand, it's broken," he added irreverently as he removed the Silencing charm from her. "Not that it's a big loss. Honestly, it felt like a mouldy twig off the grou-"

Ginny let out an ear-piercing scream that was cut short as Malfoy twisted her head viciously by the handful of hair he'd grabbed to wake her. The shift in his weight forced the air out of her lungs. "Bloody hell, you crazy bint, what did I just say?"

She glared up at him triumphantly and time ticked by. When it became apparent that nothing was going to happen, her eyes got wide and her breath caught in her throat. "They're dead," she breathed. "Oh Merlin, they're dead and you've killed them and you're going to kill me and when Harry finds out-"

"Oh, the _melodrama_," Malfoy broke in before she could reach full hysterics, rolling his eyes in disgust. "I didn't kill your family, Girl Weasel, I silenced your room. Turns out I was right not to trust the word of a blood traitor like yourself."

Unadulterated hatred flashed across her face. "Oh, that's-"

"Give me a reason," he crooned nastily as she began struggling. To remind her who had authority, he rapped his wand smartly against her chin. "I'll Petrify you. It makes the Cruciatus that much worse."

She strangled a sob of frustration. "What do you want, you rat-faced coward?" she snapped.

"Temper, Weaslette. I told you to whisper."

Her eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to control her anger. "What do you want?" she whispered finally. "How are you here?"

"Listen to me carefully, Weasley," he said, his entire demeanour changing, his voice becoming low and urgent. "They're coming. Tonight. Soon."

"How-are-you-here?" she demanded.

"Your prat brother, of course."

"You've got Ron," she murmured faintly.

"No, one of your other prat brothers. The older one. Dead useful spy for us, being so close to the Minister and all." Ginny stiffened in shock. "He told us the stubborn weak spots in your wards and I just slipped right in and came in through your window. And that's what they'll do, too. They've got orders to take you alive."

"So that's why you're here. You want the reward. Well, congratulations."

He closed his eyes as if in pain, releasing her hair. "No, it's not like that," he ground out, disentangling his fingers. "It's going to be horrible for you."

"What, like the first time wasn't bad enough?" snapped Ginny, propping herself up on her elbows.

"That was hardly the start of what he's got planned now," he said softly, standing.

"Oh, Tom," she sighed, sadness touching her features as her eyes glazed over.

Draco shuddered. "He's not what you remember. Look, they'll be here at any time. I'll go first; if I send up red sparks, wake your family and leave as quickly as you can. If I don't, they're already here. I hope your wretched brothers have more darkness powder you can use with this," he said, pulling his Hand of Glory from his robes and holding it out towards her. Ginny hesitated a moment, then knocked it to the floor with the back of her hand. "Do you know what I _paid _for that?" he yelped indignantly, going after it while keeping his wand trained towards her.

"It's a trick," she said flatly.

He froze mid-stoop. "What?"

"It's a trick," she repeated, louder this time. His jaw sagged open in disbelief. "You want to lure us out of the Burrow. Well, it won't work. I lost my naïveté in my first year. Go ahead," she continued in the same monotone, "Kill me. See what happens when you do."

"I'm not going to kill you!" he cried, bewildered. "Merlin, Ginny, I'm trying to _help_ you!"

"Oh, I'll just bet you are," she sneered. "Sneaking into your sworn enemies' household because you've decided you like being _helpful_ instead of a gigantic bastard, that maybe life with Tommy the Half-Blood isn't all that great so you want to join up with your lifelong nemesis?"

She couldn't tell if he was scowling or smirking at her. "We're purebloods, Ginny," he said quietly. "Even a blood-traitor doesn't deserve what he has planned for you."

"Which you conveniently haven't described yet," she snapped pointedly.

"We're not that dissimilar in the end," he continued, ignoring that remark and what she muttered under her breath at this new declaration. "We were both controlled by powerful figures at a young age, to our detriment. You more, of course," he added hastily before she could protest. "And we both know what it's like to be stomped on by Potter. I've watched you, you know, and how he's treated you over the years. You don't really think he-"

"Don't," she hissed suddenly, her fingers curling into claws. "Don't you _dare_."

Draco blinked at her, taking in her bared teeth and the deep colour flooding around her squinting eyes. "Fine. Fine, Weaslette. This is all just a trick and I'm trying to flush your family out into the open. An O for you and your brilliance," he finished sarcastically, the sneer back on his face. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get out of this miserable hovel before they find me here and I wind up as dead as you're going to wish you were in a couple of hours." He muttered an oath under his breath and without warning, he swooped down and pressed his lips to the hair above her temple. "Please, Ginny," he breathed, "let me save someone."

Ginny had been so intent on watching Malfoy's wildly flailing wand arm during his speech that she was utterly unprepared for this. She was still gaping incomprehensibly as he moved towards the window and only the sharp _crack_ of his Disapparation startled her into semi-normality.

There he was, gliding across the garden in the moonlight, preparing to slip between the hawthorne and lilac. He paused a moment, and a small object sailed through her window, which was cracked stubbornly open all year round. The musty twig Ginny had found on the ground that morning skidded across her bedspread. It was unbroken. She turned away from the window, drew an unsteady breath, and let it out as slowly as she brought her wand out from under her covers. "Goodbye, Malfoy," she whispered, removing the silencing charm from her room.

Seconds later, in between the shout of "Stupefy!" and the encroaching blackness that would remove the twin countenances of Kingsley Shacklebolt and a smug Percy Weasley from his vision, Draco had a moment to comprehend how splendid the trick really was.


End file.
